"but this is from the perspective of a Muslim Arab."
And since most Iraqis are Muslims, this viewpoint should be considered.
I concur with his assessment about the Musilm charcter and the failure of the Bush administration to consider that millenia of tyrannical rule, re-inforced by cultural and religious norms could be effectively altered using western style techniques.
His suggestion is a valid one and one which has worked - as he points out.
As long as these people adhere to the Koran and its autocratic perspecitves regarding personal life, democracy is a vain dream for these people.
Furthermore, our primary reasons for getting involved there were to defend ourselves and our own best interests and Bush somehow allowed this to be morphed into an exercize in social refomr on a massive level.
There is not a singel Iraq - there are many Iraq - Shiities, Sunni and Kurdish and even more. Trying to bring these essentially 7th Century Shiekdoms into the world of 21st century Democracies wsa an exercise in futility.
We should have kept our primary objectives in mind, destroyed Saddam and his regime, moved on to the do the same thing in IRan and Syria, and either done as this writer suggests, or simply pulled out immediately and left these primitives to sort their problems out intheir own way.
"As long as these people adhere to the Koran and its autocratic perspecitves regarding personal life, democracy is a vain dream for these people."
There is really nothing else to be said. You said it all.
A returning civilian contractor from Iraq just informed me that only 2% of the people are problematic in Iraq. Of the 14 million, that means less than 300,000 present a problem. Unfortunately, 300,000 is a lot to kill and would make us look worse than Saddam, who killed far less than that number.